Byron Katie has one job: to teach people how to end their own suffering. As she guides people through her simple yet powerful process of inquiry, called The Work, they find again and again that their stressful beliefs - about the world, other people, or themselves - can no longer run their lives. Join Katie in a workshop designed to take you on this one-of-a-kind journey of self-discovery.

With her humor and lovingly incisive clarity. Katie will show you how to identify and question the stressful thoughts that cause all the suffering and violence in the world. Anyone with an open mind can do The Work. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and to do The Work with Katie.

Eckhart Tolle, author of The Power of Now, says 'The Work is like a razor-sharp sword that cuts through illusion and enables you to know for yourself the timeless essence of your being."

The day is a benefit for The Work and the Spirit Rock Scholarship Fund - thank you, Katie!

The sparkly eyes many gurus and 'teachers' the seemingly magical gaze -- this is mere technique. It can be learned.

In an interview, Shayam Dodge, who was trained to be a guru and then renounced the role, told the interview exactly this.

The following is quoted a bit out of order. Shayam told an interviewer at Elephant Journal that after he had renounced being a guru, he was dismayed when he discovered that habits he had learned via early training still elicitedidealizing, charismatic projection from students -- and he noted how he had learned to hold gaze longer than is the social norm.

Corboy note: In many traditions, there are specific techniques used to trainpractitioners to hold a gaze for unusually long periods of time.

"...I could hold another person’s gaze longer than was humanly natural. My students, in the Midwest, described me as “walking love.”

I engaged with my students as if I had some special insight into their innermost being, which I alone had access to. Not only that, but I could somehow divinely intervene in their spiritual development by rapidly processing and pushing past their interior boundaries through the power of my unique personality. I was presenting myself as a kind of potent catalyst for spiritual change and evolution. I was forceful. I was charismatic. I was highly trained.

"I was merely perpetuating the very same dysfunctions of the guru tradition that I had left and was now trying to reform.

"This was an incredibly heavy realization to come to.

"Not only was I continuing to hold my students’ idealizations of “the enlightened spiritual prodigy” but I, as a teacher, had not constructed or learned a healthier alternative teacher-student dynamic.

In essence, I was continuing to psychologically enslave my students in a relationship where they were dependent upon me..."

(Quote)It's the very thing that makes the whole scam so clever. It’s been done before and it’s applied again here.

Questioning Byron Katie or parts of her story such as her self-proclaimed and alleged awakening, with a 'cockroach'-story suddenly making its debut after eight whole years of non-existence, is the one place where people won't go.

Questioning BK would simply make any justification of whatever investment, be it financial or emotional, impossible: the conclusion would be that you’re acting irresponsibly. Or what may be more important, any hope for even getting close to some kind of ‘enlightenment’, personally or by association, would vanish into thin air in one go. Stuff you’d rather not think about. So the preferred motto becomes: “let's question everything but Katie and play ostrich”.(Unquote)

Two, many of these persons advertise by putting photos of themselves everywhere--magazines, websites.

It may produce a jolt to meet a person 'live' after having seen this person's portrait. One may have a brief dizziness, a sense of surprise a little bit likewhat happens when stepping from a dark room into sunshine, or as when one stepsoff of a jolting surface onto solid ground.

I recall feeling a bit startled when seeing the mayor of our city suddenly arrive on the sidewalk of my neighborhood. I had seen pictures of the man for years, so felt surprised to see him face to face and just a few feet away.

In a "guru theatre" context, one can easily be persuaded that this is proof that the person has special powers. All that is happening is merely a normalbit of adjustment that happens when one comes face to face with someone one knows only from testimonial or from a photograph or both.

If this encounter is culmination of an expensive investment, such as payment for a workshop, a long trip, the impact will be enhanced.

We are humans and hence, very susceptible to context and social setting -- especially if social influence is being applied without our awareness -- or ourfull consent.

One cannot 'take what you like and leave the rest' if you are not given full disclosure about what 'the rest' consists of.

Giving away a scholarship in public is one of BK's favorite tricks. It costs her nothing, and you still have to pay for the accommodation in a luxureous hotel. The next step is the Turnaround house ($ 20.000) for one month and then the certification program, which costs at least $ 40.000, if you add up all the mandatory programs you need to attend. So the work is free? I hardly think so.

My sense is that both of these people started with something legitimate, but have gotten swept up in the money game. When it comes to accusations of being cults, there's always a question as to how much of it is coming from the leader, how much from the organizers of their groups, and how much from obsessive followers. Katie and Tolle have both attracted people with obsessive qualities (they're everywhere, of course), although I'm not sure to what degree either of them encourage that sort of thing.

I've just been newly introduced to Byron Katie by a friend. Her idea seems good about not believing everything your mind brings up (we all know how our minds can change) but I'm not sure what else she teaches and don't want to get sucked in if it's just a huge money-making operation. Also, I don't really know what's behind her philosophy.

Reading these posts is helpful; any other input would also be appreciated.

I also don't subscribe to the idea that just because you think something, it makes it true. Or that not thinking it makes your suffering go away. That just sounds to me like more positive thinking hype veiled under another cloak.